Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Lufthansa has announced a hiring freeze and is offering employees unpaid leave as part of a range of cost-saving measures to attempt to limit the financial impact of the spread of the coronavirus.
The German airline, which has already cancelled all flights to China until the end of March, also said it will expand part-time work options and cancel flight attendant and other personnel training courses from April onwards. Those that are already on courses will not be hired. The company said it aimed to offer affected trainees “employment contracts in the long term”.
Fiji has extended its travel ban due to coronavirus fears. Travellers who have been in Italy, Iran and the South Korean cities of Daegu and Cheongdo will not be permitted to enter Fiji. Visitors who had been in mainland China in the last 14 days have also been forbidden entry into the Pacific nation.
Ian Thorpe, the Australian Olympic swimming legend, says athletes must consider their own health before attending the Tokyo Games this year.
Thorpe, whose five Olympic golds make him the most successful Australian Olympian all time, spoke out as concerns mounted about whether the Games in July and August will go ahead because of the coronavirus outbreak.
I think the decision should come down to each individual athlete. But whether or not they want to compete, that they should take their health into consideration first.
Italy may need to call on the European Union to offer leeway on its budget targets as it struggles with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, a senior official said.
Deputy economy minister, Laura Castelli, made the comments a day after prime minister Giuseppe Conte warned that the fallout from the outbreak, which has concentrated in the economic powerhouses of northern Italy, would be “very strong”.
If you want to share any thoughts or news tips with me about the coronavirus then please email: sarah.marsh@theguardian.com or tweet me @sloumarsh. My direct messages are open. Thanks
Swedish citizen who disappeared in 2015 is sentenced in Ningbo for ‘providing intelligence’ overseas
A Chinese court has sentenced Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison for “providing intelligence” overseas, in a case that has highlighted China’s far-reaching crackdown on critics.
A court in Ningbo, an eastern port city, said on Tuesday that Gui had been found guilty and would be stripped of political rights for five years in addition to his prison term. The brief statement said Gui had pled guilty and would not be appealing against his case.
Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus
Nearly 20,000 wildlife farmsraising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.
Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.
The World Health Organization has played down fears of a coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world, despite sudden serious outbreaks in Italy and Iran, but some experts said they believed it was now inevitable.
“Using the word pandemic now does not fit the facts, but it may certainly cause fear,” said the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a briefing.
Austria has said it will stop people suspected of carrying the coronavirus from crossing its border, after parts of northern Italy were put into lockdown over the weekend following a surge in cases.
The Austrian government released a travel warning for affected areas of Lombardy and Veneto, following a meeting of the government’s coronavirus taskforce that included the chancellor, Sebastian Kurz.
Thousands of members of a secretive religious sect in South Korea are being screened for the new coronavirus after more than 430 cases were confirmed in the country by officials, one of several fresh clusters of the disease globally.
More than 78,000 people around the world have been infected by the Covid-19 virus, with most cases in mainland China, though clusters that have unclear origins have emerged in Singapore, Iran and South Korea.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, has expressed concerned over the ‘narrowing window of opportunity’ to tackle Covid-19, and has urged the international community not to squander it. With four new cases in Iran, concern has increased about the epidemic spreading across the Middle East, and the sharp devaluation of the Iranian rial means it will be hard for its government to throw the same resources at the epidemic as China has
From Wuhan to the north of England, people have been affected by the outbreak in different ways
The coronavirus is a public health emergency, but its threat is not only medical. Millions of lives have been altered by the outbreak, from those in self-isolation in China to Chinese nationals experiencing racism abroad. We talk to those affected in different ways, from Wuhan to the north of England.
Justice chief sacked in Shandong province with prison guard reported to be source of outbreak, as South Korea adds 52 new cases. Follow latest news
China’s Global Television Network is reporting that 200 prisoners in a facility in the eastern province of Shandong are infected with Covid-19. The sources of the infection is reported to be an affected prison guard.
These prison cases may partly explain the spike in new cases today to 889, up from 394 reported on Thursday.
East China's Shandong Province reported 200 #COVID19 cases from the Rencheng Prison on Thu., bringing the total to 207 in the facility
- Virus brought in by affected prison guard - Treatments underway - Provincial justice chief among eight officials removed from office pic.twitter.com/yyMWa21a86
Car sales plummeted in China in February, state media is reporting.
Retail of domestic passenger #vehicles in China plummeted 92% y-o-y in the first half of Feb, a record decline, due to #COVID19: industrial report pic.twitter.com/SkLUjtOdqA
Mayor of Daegu orders shutdown of all kindergartens and public libraries in while two Japanese passengers from stricken Diamond Princess ship die
Two more Russians aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Japan have been diagnosed with a new virus, the Russian Embassy in Japan said Thursday.
The two will be transferred to a hospital in Japan for treatment, according to the embassy statement published on Facebook.
Dominic Raab said information had been provided to those registered for the flight, but he urged other British nationals still seeking to leave to contact the Foreign Office. He added: “We will continue to support British nationals who wish to stay in Japan.”
I can confirm the evacuation flight out of Tokyo on Friday for British nationals from the Diamond Princess cruise ship: https://t.co/vBYNRkvBbK
Trump’s chief of staff gives clear warning about using Chinese firm to supply equipment
Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff has warned there could be “a direct and dramatic impact” on the sharing of intelligence between the US and UK if Boris Johnson’s government goes ahead with allowing Huawei to supply equipment to build the British 5G mobile phone network.
Mick Mulvaney’s remarks represent one of the most forceful warnings yet by senior Trump administration officials, who have repeatedly made clear their concerns about the British decision to allow the Chinese company to supply its technology.
British passengers stuck on the cruise ship in Japan where more than 600 people have been infected with the coronavirus have have been told to stay onboard by the Foreign Office, while those who are evacuated face a 14-day quarantine in the UK.
Japanese authorities said those who had tested negative for the virus were allowed to leave on Wednesday, but the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warned that passengers who disembark may not be allowed to board a British evacuation flight scheduled for later this week.
Inspectors in protective suits have been going door to door in Wuhan in an effort to find every infected person, the Associated Press reports.
Wednesday marked the final day of a campaign to root out anyone with symptoms whom authorities may have missed so far.
Britons returning home from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that has had more than 600 cases of coronavirus will be quarantined at the same NHS facility that housed people flown back to the UK from Wuhan.
The Department of Health said: “We can confirm that an accommodation block on the Arrowe Park NHS site will be used to isolate those returning from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. They will be kept in this location for the 14-day quarantine period, with around-the-clock support from medical staff at all times.”
Analysts say epidemic poses gravest threat to authorities since Tiananmen Square – and Beijing’s tight control could backfire
The coronavirus crisis in China has posed unprecedented political challenges to the authorities and prompted them to further crack down on speech freedom and tighten control over people in a desperate move to bolster the regime, say analysts and activists.
After President Xi Jinping ordered “resolute efforts” to curb the spread of coronavirus in his first public remarks on the disease on 20 January, Wuhan was swiftly placed under lockdown. Millions of communities across China also began to implement draconian epidemic control measures.
Beijing’s draconian measures to contain outbreak have delayed global transmission
The World Health Organization is having to perform a diplomatic balancing act over the new coronavirus outbreak, caught between China – whose draconian measures to contain the disease have delayed transmission to the rest of the world –and China’s critics, who say its behaviour is typical of its disregard for human rights.
At every press briefing, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has defended China’s handling of the epidemic in the face of critical questions, very often from US journalists. At the end of January, when Tedros declared a public health emergency of international concern – having put it off a week earlier under what was assumed to be pressure from Beijing – he praised China for protecting the rest of the world.
The Italian luxury fashion house Prada has postponed a fashion show due to take place in Japan in May.
In a statement, the company said:
Due to the current uncertainty related to the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Prada Resort fashion show originally scheduled for May 21 in Japan will be postponed.
Repatriating passengers from the coronavirus-stricken cruise ship in Japan is not without risks, a medical expert has said.
Paul Hunter, professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia, said:
Considerable care needs to be made to ensure that the passengers do not transmit infection between themselves or to cabin crew during the flight home and once back on home soil they do not act as a focus for the spread of the disease into their home countries – any returning passengers may be put in quarantine on their return.
It is well known that certain infections such as influenza and norovirus can spread rapidly on board cruise ships. Cruise ships take passengers and crew from all over the world, often passengers are relatively elderly, they spend most of their time on board indoors mixing with others.
The most likely [infection] route is direct person-to-person transmission when people are close to an infected person, but with currently publicly available information it is not possible to rule out other issues at this stage.
Company hit by shutdown in China and says it will fail to meet quarterly revenue target
Apple has warned of global “iPhone supply shortages” resulting from its Chinese factories being shut because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The Californian company told investors on Monday night it would fail to meet its quarterly revenue target of $63-67bn (£48-52bn) because of the “temporarily constrained” supply of iPhones and a dramatic drop in Chinese shoppers during the virus crisis. Apple did not provide a new forecast for its second-quarter revenue.
People who flout new order in Xiaogan city in central Hubei face detention for 10 days as global death toll reaches 1,775. Follow live news and latest updates
Shares in China have posted strong gains after the country’s central bank cut the interest rate on its medium-term lending to try to cushion businesses from the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak. The bank also injected another 200bn yuan of liquidity into the system.
The move is expected to pave the way for a reduction in the country’s benchmark loan prime rate on Thursday, Reuters reports, to lower borrowing costs and ease financial strains on companies hit by the epidemic.
China CSI 300 erases Covid-19 slump.
Why? * Short selling ban (in China this means the Gulag!) * Funds need gov't approval to sell (prove an outflow) * Record repo injections by the PBoC, rate cuts * Xi - will cut taxes and record fiscal stimulus
PBOC cut the rate on MLF to 3.15%, from 3.25% in the previous operation. https://t.co/EXAEiLHayq
A reporter is asking about Australians onboard the MS Westerdam cruise ship that docked in Cambodia last Thursday. An American passenger on that ship was subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19, after testing in Malaysia. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne answers:
There were some Australians on the vessel Westerdam. 39 of those have remained in Phnom Penh after the ship finally docked. They have been provided with hotel accommodation in the capital.
Chinese ambassador says consumers not being served well by ‘politically motivated’ ban on tech firm’s entry into 5G network
The Australian government’s ban on Huawei’s participation in building the nation’s 5G network remains a “sore point or thorny issue” between the two countries, the Chinese ambassador said on Monday, as he criticised the government for discriminating against a Chinese company.
Cheng Jingye dismissed concerns Huawei may pose a threat to Australia’s national security given its links to the communist Chinese government, and said Australia’s ban was “politically motivated”.